"Well, it's not quite a mop and it's not quite a puppet… but man (laughs). So to answer your question, I don't know." – Homer Simpson, "A Fish Called Selma"

Yahoo! 360°

Thanks to the invitation-sending efforts of one Ken Leebow, I am now a member of the Yahoo! 360° beta. I had previously tried to beg invitations off my brother-in-law (who works for Overture) and the inimitable and irascible Dave Winer. It seems that both of them were too busy. ;-)

In any event, I’m giving things a spin over at Y!360°. It certainly seems to aggregate all of the disparate parts of Yahoo!’s community offerings: message boards, photo sharing (not Flickr yet), blogging, friends management. They even want me to blog using my phone! You get the picture. Check out my blog to see part of the coolness.

This whole social-networking/blogging/photo-sharing mash-up looks to be the “portal” of 2005. Users (people, really) have the most personal of information customized to their needs. Add some news services (a la My Yahoo!), generous usage of RSS and search and you’ve got a ton of people who have new homepages set to Yahoo! 360°.

Brilliant move, fellas. Would this be following the Zawodny train? (FULL DISCLOSURE: I did not ask Jeremy for an invite.)

Oh, and if you want to beg some invites off me, have at it. The more partiers, the merrier.